The 18th EMBL PhD Symposium: Life by Numbers – Towards Quantitative Biology – will be held at the EMBL Heidelberg between November 17th-19th, 2016.
Current research in biology demands an increasingly quantitative focus where system-wide approaches and theoretical modelling play a central role. Modern techniques allow the collection of vast amounts of data, yet analysing the underlying mechanisms and rules from this data remains challenging. This is further complicated by the fact that many of these processes are inherently stochastic and rarely accompanied by exact functional descriptions. Faced with these challenges, we still need to find ways to draw accurate conclusions and gain higher-level understanding.
The aim of this conference is to highlight recent advances and applications of quantitative research. In addition, we hope this symposium will inspire young researchers to see the implications of their work beyond a single process or correlation. This may help us get closer to predicting complex biological behavior by well-established principles comparable to those found in fundamental physics. At the core of this idea stands an interdisciplinary approach, which is also an integral part of the research here at EMBL. Finally, the symposium will consider quantification across multiple scales of biology, ranging from the sub-cellular to the multi-cellular level.
We hope that an increased focus on quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches on a systems-level will help us reveal underlying mechanistic principles in biology.
Registration and abstract submission deadline: 15.09.2016
More information available here